Fit to Fly
by cuter-than-a-guinea-pig
Summary: "As other pilots radioed through, he prayed for static. Absence was better than a replacement." Collins' thoughts through his first mission following Dunkirk.


The sun was out again, bright and warm. It had been out for what seemed like two weeks straight at this point. He was beginning to miss the rain. Only a Scott would describe Dover as an overly sunny place. They were outside today though so Collins decided it was best the rain hold off. It was one thing to be running through the muddy back country fields during the rain, crawling through the shrub, climbing over garden walls. He had enjoyed that part of basic training. The low drum of the rain drowned out all thought, about the blister on his heel, or the ache in his shoulder, or how the bond of brotherhood seemed to once again be alluding him. All that was left was pounding of his feet in time to the heavy drops. It had been a taste of war, a taste of misery and survival. They weren't running today though. Three days into flight school, they were suited and lined up on the Dover airfield. Some of the others were eyeing the Spitfire parked outside of the hanger on their left. Collins' attention was drawn downwards however, to the small packs at their feet.

The heavy fall of flight boots echoed on the pavement behind them and like a machine, the boys straightened at attention, head up, feet together, back straight. "At ease soldier," the voice called from behind, its owner still sounding several yards away by the way it echoed across the empty runways and off the tin hangers and barracks that surrounded them. Shoulders fell, stances widened. "Now," the voice continued, closer now but not yet in view. It surprised Collins. No salute, no introduction. "Before you fly, you need to learn how to fall. Or rather, how to not fall. Be it clear lads. You will be shot at. You will be hit. Your trusted bird will twist out of the air and plummet to the ground below in smoke and flame. You will be strapped to her and she will hold tight. Because lads she was built to hold you, to cradle you and shield you in her bosom and that's all she knows, and she will go to her grave doing so. But after today, you will know more. You will know that she is only a piece of tin and there are a thousand more of her waiting for you back home in a hanger. After today," he said, finally coming into view as Collins turned his head to the left. He wasn't particularly tall, but his shoulders were broad. He walked with more of an ease than a strength, his stride long but unhurried, his shoulders relaxed, his head down looking over the pack he carried with him. "You will know how to eject yourself form your doomed plane and how to safely deploy your shoot to soften your landing." He nodded to the packs at their feet, identical to the one he carried. "Any questions?" He looked up then for the first time waiting for an answer but met instead with silence.

Collins wasn't surprised by this. He himself was a little too bemused by the speech and the vivid images it had created to question anything other than if he was disturbed or not.

"Just to be clear, this is a class. It's not an exam. It's not a drill. Ask questions. Get clarification. Don't fumble your way through just to be through. Walk away from today knowing how to survive a hit. Your life depends on it. Your family depends on it. Your country depends on it." Again, silence. Seemingly satisfied though, he tossed his parachute pack to the ground at his feet. "Alright, let's start." He sat down behind the pack, throwing his legs out wide on either side of it, not unlike how a toddler playing with toy blocks would sit. "Sit, sit," he beckoned. They all followed orders and continued to mirror the officer's actions as he examined the pack. "Now just because you don't have to fold the shoot doesn't mean you're entirely off the hook. You need to inspect it when you take it from the heap. Make sure there are no holes in the bag, that the ropes haven't frayed. Make sure the straps haven't frayed, and that all the buckles are present and secure. These two buckles keep you attached to the shoot. They need to be strong enough to hold when your shoot inflates and catches you, slowing you from 200 to 30 kilometers per hour in seconds. Some pencil pusher can do the maths there but its a lot of force boys," he said giving the strap attached to the dangling buckle a few tugs. "Check the pull cord. Check that it's still secured properly, that it's there. These packs get trucked back and forth to different airfields, they get moved around within the fields as new barracks are built. They go on many missions and return undeployed but maybe a little roughed up. Make sure you don't strap into the one that's been roughed up a little too much. Good?"

"Yes sir," someone down the line said.

The officer glanced at the soldier, squinting under the sun, and a smile quirked on his face. It was as if the absurdity of the situation was hitting him. The way he was seated, the way all the young men before him were hanging on his every word despite it. He looked human. None of the officers in basic had looked human. They looked like military machines, full of fury and tactic, with no time for fear or grief. He was different though. He looked back at them and saw faces, saw people, saw comrades he'd be sharing the skies with. Maybe it shouldn't have been, but Collins found that comforting. Maybe he'd be smarter wanting to join the cogs in the unstoppable, infallibility that was the machine of war but he didn't. He'd rather learn from and fly beside a real human being and sitting on the tarmac in front of one now brought a smile to his own face. The officer caught his eye then and Collins looked away quickly to avoid being singled out for any reason. Head down, blend in. It was always the best strategy.

"Alright, on your feet. Let's see how these things buckle in, shall we." They all clambered upright, packs in hand. "Genius behind these little things is that they double as a seat cushion. I'll tell you lot one thing." He stepped closer to where they were lined up as if were about to divulge a secrete. "Ol' Georgy boy has done good by us. The Spitfires," he said turning to admire the aircraft, "are things of beauty." He paced slowly down the line as he spoke. "The purr of their engine is sweet nothings in your ear, like the song of an angel."

He was doing it again, romanticizing the planes as if they were women. It was certainly odd and the novelty had worn off for some who begun to look down at their shoes or off towards the barracks. On the contrary, Collins found himself more invested. It was one of those weird little human quirks. It defied the command and control and the might that was trying to take away all their humanity and turn them into nothing but weapons to be unleashed on the enemy, cold, bleak grey. If you wanted to make it out the other side with your humanity in tack, you had to have it on your way in too. At least that was Collins' theory, the theory of a young man yet to take gunfire or fire on someone else, yet to see friends fall from the skies. Maybe after it was all over his theory would change but right now he allowed himself to take comfort in the in the officer's musings.

"You can hear it, you can feel it vibrate through you because the things are stripped to the bone. Can make for a rough ride but these help immensely. It's also painfully obvious if you've forgotten it. Now seeing as they become seat cushions, where are we strapping them in?"

He had stopped in front of Collins and directed the question to him. "Your arse, Sir," Collins mustered caught off guard by the address, the contents of the answer, and the deep blue of the officer's eyes now visible up close.

"No. Your arse." He grinned and gave him a wink.

* * *

It was all wrong now. Wrong in a way that it probably should have felt from the beginning but miraculously hadn't. Collins frowned at the idea. His jaw clenched, his back teeth grinding together. He consciously opened his mouth a bit, licked his chapped lips. Another headache on top of the unease shaking through his body was the last thing he needed. Headaches had become his stasis since he'd returned from Dunkirk. He told his superiors that it had something to do with the crash. Water had a way of becoming a solid, a brick wall, when a plane plummeted to it's surface. It wasn't a lie. It was simply an omission of the lack of sleep and tension he built behind his eyes as bit down hard on his teeth or the inside or his cheek to stop the tears. Sometimes he couldn't stop them but even that left him with a dull throb in his temples. He wasn't entirely sure why he was crying, a notion that added to the stress of the situation. He was a pilot, a fighter pilot. Everyone is His Majesties military knew that fighter pilots signed up for one thing: death, to be shot out of the air and plummet to the hostile ground below. But it was as if that reality had only become so since Dunkirk. He had flown missions before the evacuation, across the channel, over the front lines that had once existed on the continent. He had watched fellow airmen shot out of the sky beside him, watched their planes bank and twist and fall until only the smoke trail was left. Not one of them had deployed a shoot. The fifteen-pound bag strapped beneath his buttocks was a placebo designed to look like a safety net so you would steer into the line of fire, so you wouldn't tie your fate to that of your plane. It could take the fire, it could stall and break apart, explode mid air but you could float safely down and jump into another plane, hot off the factory floor the next day. Their deaths had never bothered him before. But before he had always had Farrier. The formation would break, planes, German and British alike, scattered everywhere, gun fire cutting through the sky from all directions, smoke, flames, dark clouds that left you blind, hit calls, complete chaos. Somewhere amidst it all though the steady, deep, assured voice would hum in his ear and order would be restored. The remaining squadron would line up again, they would hit their target, and they would pull up, one, two, three, in perfect rhythm, bank north, then west, and fly back to the small French air strip in country side north of Paris where the RAF had set up base. They would land and Farrier would light a cigarette and they would sit on the stone wall that enclosed the air field and pass it back and forth. There had been moments when the Tabaco smoke drifting upwards from the glowing butt had begun to look too similar to a Spitfire in a tail spin hundreds of feet below him. His eyes would start to cross, fixate on the fire, the destruction, the horror of being trapped within it all, suffocating. But Farrier had been there then, to lean a little closer, to take the cigarette from his hands and his lips, to take away the smoke and the fire. His lungs filled again, his heart slowed, and his eyes relaxed and meandered once more across the grassy hills that surrounded the airfield and the old cottages that stood amongst them.

"Fit to fly," Farrier would ask after stamping out the fading embers on the wall.

"Yes, Sir," he would answer, earning himself that bemused grin and a head shake before Farrier stood, tucked his hands into his pant pockets and lead them back to the makeshift barracks.

But now he was no longer sure. Collins stood on the runway, starring unfocused at the planes lined up before him. His eyes hovered on the empty space Farrier used fill, standing by the propeller, hand resting on its blade, watching the engineers perform the last checks. The other pilots passed him and his feet followed. They were unsure in their step. Some short, some long. The parachute pack bounced awkwardly against the back of his thighs. It felt more like a slap in the face.

He made it up, into the air. He fell into formation. He was becoming one of their cogs, able to keep turning their war machine no matter what. He hated it. He hated everything now. It was all wrong.

Soon they were out over the Channel, patrolling, reaffirming the new front line. The continent was lost, and Farrier to it. They wouldn't fly far enough south to even see the French coast, not even Calais.

Flying over the water wasn't as calming as it used to be, when he could listen Farriers voice in his ear see his eyes in the vast blue that was deep and rich and all encompassing. He would let his body sink into his seat, allow himself to be cradled. The way Farrier had always talked about. Now he feels every jolt and the engine is too loud. It's a cruel reminder of the silence of Farrier's final pass over the beach. Betrayed by his beloved. Stranded. Alone. As other pilots radioed through, he prayed for static. Absence was better than a replacement.

The water below looked grey, cold, muddied by the bodies and ships it had swallowed. He had almost been one of them, drowned in the gentle lapping. In many ways, it felt like he was.


End file.
